


Confusion

by DearDiary



Series: Tumblr prompts [1]
Category: Broadchurch, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Confusion, F/M, Flirting, Swearing, Teninch, Teninch Fic, Tumblr Prompt, UST, shower cubicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29885130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DearDiary/pseuds/DearDiary
Summary: DI Alec Hardy meets DS Rose Tyler in an unexpected place.
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Rose Tyler
Series: Tumblr prompts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2197311
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Confusion

**Author's Note:**

> This is a reply to gallifreystray's prompt on Tumblr "Rose x Alec 'nice shirt'". Hope you'll enjoy this :)
> 
> P.S. Prompts are currently open for Alec/Rose fics. See the note at the end for details.

Detective Inspector Alec Hardy stepped into the changing room just near the loos, slightly swaying on his feet. It’s been 36 hours since he had last slept, uninterrupted, for more than 3 hours, and pacemaker or not, it has started taking its toll on him. His chest was aching dully on the left side, too, and he understood that it was high time to go home and fall into restorative sleep/coma unless he wanted to find himself on the hospital bed, again. Pretending to be Becca Fisher’s husband.

Hardy shuddered slightly when he remembered about all the awkward moment shared with the hotel owner.

He couldn’t allow himself to come home, though – his ex-wife had decided to stay over with his teenage daughter, Daisy, and he allowed the two women to take up his chalet for the time being. It was probably for the better – Becca would be delighted to have some fresh gossip on his and Tess's catastrophic marriage – he didn’t need more of the bad fame that he already had.

Shower at the police station and a kip on the couch in his office it was, then.

Alec shucked his clothes off as he stepped into the shower cubicle that protected his modesty with matted glass walls. The hot water poured over his tired body and made him even more weary. It seemed that his legs were made of jelly and the urgency to sleep seemed almost unbearable. He scrubbed his hair clean from the dust and grease that permeated his body while he and Miller were solving the drug-use case in the pizzeria 20 miles South of Broadchurch. It was a murder disguised as an overdose – yet the traces indicated that there was more than one sloppy murderer involved in the case of the lad in the dingy pizza place.

Hardy turned off the steaming water and wrapped his hips in the clean towel that was lying in the neat stack left of the shower cubicle. He opened the glass door and stepped outside careful not to slip on the watery grey tile. 

His heart wasn’t hurting as hard as it was ten minutes before but he was still due for his deserved rest.

Hardy proceeded to his locker only to realise that the key he procured from the pockets of his grey trousers didn’t fit.

He understood his mistake too late – the door to the room opened in the distance, and someone walked into the room to stop at the other row of the lockers to rummage through their things.

Through  _ her _ things . 

This wasn’t the male changing room.

The locker wasn’t his.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Alec chanted quietly under his nose while hastily putting his pants and his teal-coloured shirt on.

A soft gasp interrupted his attempts to try and get decent in front of the audience. 

The audience being the new recruit transferred from London.

Detective Sergeant Rose Tyler. 

Rose bloody Tyler.

The young blonde woman who had been eyeing him greedily ever since the first day she was assigned to work under his “tyranny”. He heard her say so but couldn’t find it in him to be angry at DS Tyler. It was refreshing to hear truth about himself after all the buttering up his employees tried to do in hopes of winning his kindness.

The looks the blonde was giving him were enough to make his cold blood run hot and his half-dead body reminded him that he was a man in his early forties and, pacemaker or not, he could still experience all the things he experienced back when he was a young lad, only he could control himself better these days.

While Alec was struggling futilely to arrange his appearance into something that barely reminded the meaning the word “decent”, Rose bloody Tyler didn’t lose a chance to make him go tomato-red at her innuendos.

“A nice shirt you’ve got there, Inspector. I like the colour, works nice with your eyes. Like a colour palette from the fancy furniture store. The pants, though...a little bit “meh”. I thought you’d be different under all of those layers of yours. Brighter. Braver. More unexpected. Still, I have to cut you some slack, it’s been one hell of a case, and I’m dying for a shower and a kip, too. Do you mind vacating the shower, sir? Or do you want me to wash your back?” the woman spoke nonchalantly.

Damn this woman! Oh, she had to know the power she held over him. She was his subordinate when it came to the paper work. Yet she was brilliant and never needed his surveillance. Rose Tyler eliminated three males that tried to assault her while she was working on the ‘Pizza Case’, as the police station named it. Hardy nearly had a fucking heart attack when Miller reported to him that one of his agents, specifically Rose Tyler, landed in the hospital with a mild concussion and several stitches after the brawl with the bullies who didn’t want the world to know about the drug dealing in the surroundings of Broadchurch. 

Yet there she was, Rose bloody Tyler, with nary a scratch on that pretty face of hers, making fun of his lame state of being.

Damn her for reviving the things Alec thought were long dead and gone.

Bless her for making him feel alive.

He’d have that kip on the couch, he’d close the bleeding drug case and he’d send her packing to London back to the station she came from.

He’d stop being her supervisor.

He’d find Rose Tyler and he would let her relax and kip with him alright. She would never know about his traitorous failing heart and he wouldn’t have to listen to his boss’s lectures about fucking his subordinates. 

Alec knew she was willing to wait. Rose Tyler turned out to be a patient woman, and he would have to make her waiting worth the while.

Rose gave him a teasing tongue-touched smile while he struggled into the jacket of his suit and offered him his tie on the way out.

Such a flirt.

The door to the ladies’ changing rooms shut close and Alec sighed, leaning onto it. Thank God it was Rose. She wasn’t the type to gossip, so his mistake would never be heard of by the rest of the team, Miller included.

Detective Inspector Alec Hardy sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. These were the rough days. Still, he had something to expect by the end of the ‘Pizza Case’.

Rose Tyler’s goodbye smile was enough to keep him going.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me at deardiary17 on Tumblr if you want to submit a prompt.


End file.
